TEARGAS AND TYRANNY: THE EAST AFRICAN UNION OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS AND FRAGILE EGOS

Are all the three East African countries’ leaders reading from the same script of harming and silencing political dissidents? On Wednesday, Tanzanian police arrested the leading opposition leader, Tundu A. Lissu, after he addressed a rally—no warrant, no explanation, no procedural fairness. In Uganda, Dr. Kizza Besigye has been in custody since November, reportedly abducted while in Kenya and forcefully transferred to Kampala. In Kenya, on Wednesday, former Kakamega Senator Cleophas Malala was tear gassed and barred from overseeing the rehearsal of the Butere Girls High School’s play Chaos of War, a performance that daringly critiques state brutality. On Thursday, the girls were forced to stage the play at 7.30 a.m. with no audience and no cameras. They chose to stage a walkout in protest. Across the region, political spaces are shrinking rapidly. In Tanzania, hundreds have allegedly disappeared after criticizing President Samia Suluhu Hassan. In Uganda, the National Unity Platform (NUP) continues to suffer under a barrage of unlawful detentions and abductions. In Kenya, youth activists involved in the anti-Finance Bill protests of June 2024 were abducted, tortured, and threatened. What binds these three countries today appears not to be just geography or economic cooperation under the East African Community—but a shared, disturbing contempt for dissent and a creeping normalization of authoritarianism. It is almost comical—if not tragic—that in 2025, three grown adults wielding the might of nations still crumble under the weight of mere words. President Samia Suluhu Hassan, General Yoweri Museveni, and President William Ruto preside over governments that claim to be democratic yet respond to criticism like spoiled emperors scorned at court. Their egos are so fragile, even a high school play (Echoes of War), a tweet, or a protest song triggers the full force of the state. If these leaders were half as committed to governance as they are to silencing dissent, their countries would be thriving democracies by now. Their reaction to critique is so violently disproportionate, one would think they rule by divine right rather than democratic mandate. Every chant, placard, or political rally is met with riot gear and repression, revealing not power, but insecurity draped in state regalia. As Selwyne Duke once mused, “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.” And indeed, these leaders hate truth-tellers with an intensity only explainable by the hollowness of their own narratives. What we are witnessing is not strength but the insecurity of men terrified of mirrors. For leaders who boast of their popular mandates, they appear awfully allergic to the opinions of the very people who elected them. Like the emperor Caligula, who once declared "Let them hate me, so long as they fear me," these modern-day autocrats hide their inadequacy behind riot shields, surveillance, and propaganda. And yet, no amount of teargas or censorship can deodorize the stench of fear seeping from State Houses in Dodoma, Kampala, and Nairobi. To rule through fear is not to rule at all—it is to govern like shadows terrified of the sun. James Baldwin once wrote, “The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose,” but perhaps the inverse is just as true: the most pitiful creation is a leader who has everything, yet is terrified of losing control over public opinion. In silencing critics, these presidents expose their greatest weakness—an allergy to accountability and a fear that the people may finally see through the façade. One wonders: if criticism from students, poets, and pastors rattles them this much, what monsters lurk in their own minds? Kids? In Tanzania, the trajectory of repression has been consistent since the era of the late President John Pombe Magufuli. While some hoped that President Samia Suluhu would mark a new dawn of democracy and inclusivity, early signs of her leadership suggested otherwise. Although she released some political prisoners and allowed exiled opposition figures to return, this proved superficial. By early 2023, the same tactics of intimidation had resumed. Tundu Lissu, who had survived an assassination attempt in 2017 and spent years in exile, returned to Tanzania in January 2023 to contest the political space once more. However, he has faced relentless harassment from the police and state agencies. His rallies are disrupted, permits denied, and his supporters arrested. The arbitrary arrest on April 10, 2025, without a warrant, smacks of a state machinery intolerant of scrutiny. Moreover, human rights organisations such as the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) in Dar es Salaam have documented hundreds of enforced disappearances since 2021, particularly targeting critics of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party and journalists reporting on corruption and police brutality. Uganda, long labelled a "military democracy", has deepened its descent into outright autocracy under President Yoweri Museveni. In power since 1986, Museveni's regime has increasingly relied on a blend of constitutional manipulation and brute force to suppress opponents. The fate of Dr. Kizza Besigye is emblematic. A former ally turned opponent, Besigye has endured arrests, house detentions, tear gas attacks, and multiple court battles. Besigye was kidnapped in Nairobi, where he had been meeting diaspora supporters, and secretly driven to Kampala by military operatives and held incommunicado at a military barracks in Nakasongola. Such extrajudicial cross-border operations represent a frightening new precedent in East Africa. It recalls the 2018 abduction of Rwanda’s opposition figure Paul Rusesabagina from Dubai to Kigali, or even the earlier 2017 deportation of Miguna Miguna from Kenya to Canada. Uganda’s record under Museveni also includes the November 2020 massacre of over 50 people following the arrest of opposition MP Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine. The violence against NUP supporters has not ceased since. Hundreds of young people in Kamwokya, Luweero, and other NUP strongholds have been abducted, some never to return. Parliamentarians like Hon. Francis Zaake and Hon. Allan Ssewanyana have been tortured, some left with permanent injuries. The Uganda Human Rights Commission, once a bastion of justice, now functions more as an apologist than an arbiter of justice. Kenya, for its part, masks its repression under a democratic veneer. Boasting one of Africa’s most progressive constitutions and a vibrant judiciary, it has long stood out as a beacon in the region. Yet beneath this façade, Kenya too is sliding into illiberalism. The June 2024 maandamano protests against the controversial Finance Bill exposed the state’s increasing intolerance for civic expression. Thousands of youth—most notably Gen Z activists—took to the streets of Nairobi, Kisumu, and Mombasa. Their slogans were not just about tax injustice, but about the broader erosion of hope, employment, and government accountability. The response from the state was brutal. Live bullets, water cannons, and mass arrests were the order of the day. According to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, at least 36 protestors were killed and over 500 arrested between June and August 2024. Worse still, there were credible reports of abductions allegedly carried out by the DCI, NIS and other shadowy security units. Youths were picked up from their homes in the dead of night, driven around blindfolded, beaten, and dumped kilometres away with chilling warnings: “Stop talking or you’ll disappear for good.” The Law Society of Kenya, under the leadership of President Faith Odhiambo, has called for a judicial inquiry, but little progress has been made. Today’s incident involving Cleophas Malala further reveals how even political insiders who deviate from the ruling script are not spared. His attempt to support a school play that mirrors the anguish of the youth was met with teargas and police barricades. This sends a chilling message that artistic expression and youthful dissent will be policed into silence. This wave of coordinated repression across the East African region cannot be dismissed as mere coincidence. It reveals a pattern: governments increasingly adopting the language of democracy while deploying the tools of dictatorship. Elections are held, yes, but they are neither free nor fair. Media outlets operate, but under heavy censorship and threats. Courts issue judgments, but many go unenforced or are reversed via executive pressure. In all three countries, the security apparatus operates with near-impunity. The police, once public servants, now serve as agents of fear. The role of regional and international actors in this crisis has been minimal at best, complicit at worst. The East African Community has been conspicuously silent, preferring trade diplomacy over human rights enforcement. The African Union’s Charter on Democracy, Elections, and Governance might as well be written in invisible ink, given its lack of enforcement. Western partners, while occasionally issuing statements of concern, continue to fund security programs in these countries, thereby indirectly enabling state brutality. The US, UK, and EU continue to partner with Uganda and Kenya in counterterrorism efforts, pouring millions into their security budgets, even as those same budgets are used to oppress domestic populations. Civil society, often the last line of defence, is being systematically undermined. NGOs in Tanzania have been deregistered en masse for allegedly promoting "foreign values". In Uganda, the Financial Intelligence Authority now uses money laundering laws to freeze accounts of rights organisations. In Kenya, protest organizers have faced trumped-up charges ranging from unlawful assembly to cybercrime. The state seeks not just to arrest bodies, but to paralyze institutions of resistance. There is also a dangerous psychological war underway—a campaign to paint dissent as treason, protestors as paid agents, and critics as enemies of development. State-sponsored bloggers and influencers flood social media with hate, disinformation, and defamation. Activists like Boniface Mwangi in Kenya, Stella Nyanzi in Uganda, and Fatma Karume in Tanzania are routinely attacked online and offline. The aim is to isolate them, exhaust them, and erase them from public memory. Kenya, Yet, in the face of these threats, voices of resistance persist. In Tanzania, lawyers like Fatma Karume continue to challenge state overreach despite being disbarred. In Uganda, artists like Bobi Wine have turned their music into a megaphone for freedom. In Kenya, youth-led movements such as #OccupyParliament and #RejectFinanceBill2024 are redefining civic engagement. These individuals, often operating at great personal risk, remind the region—and the world—that the fight for justice is not over. Still, we must ask: how many more must be disappeared, tortured, or exiled before the region wakes up? How many more school plays must be banned, rallies disrupted, or court orders ignored before East Africa admits it is at war with its own people? The dream of Pan-African unity and liberation is turning into a nightmare of shared repression. How will history judge us? When President William Ruto's government unleashes tear gas on schoolgirls at Butere Girls High School for daring to stage a play that critiques his regime, or when President Samia Suluhu's government sends police to arrest Tundu Lissu without a warrant for merely addressing a rally, or when General Yoweri Museveni orchestrates the abduction of Dr. Kizza Besigye from Kenyan soil and drags him back to Ugandan custody like a fugitive of war, one cannot help but draw an eerie connection to the world’s most ego-fractured and insecure dictators. This is the same psychological DNA that compelled Adolf Hitler to execute his closest allies in the 1934 “Night of the Long Knives” because he feared dissent within the Nazi party. It is the same fragility that saw Joseph Stalin order the execution of poet Osip Mandelstam for penning a satirical poem in 1933 mocking his moustache and cruelty. Maybe like Stalin, one of these leaders will order a purge on men whose only crime will be a raised eyebrow. In East Africa today, our rulers aren’t content with dismissing criticism—they are hellbent on annihilating the very possibility of it. These are leaders whose hearts flutter with paranoia at the sight of microphones, whose hands tremble when artists dare to speak the truth, and who believe public opinion must be manufactured, not earned. The insecurity runs so deep it pierces the very soul of their governance. Museveni, who has now ruled Uganda for nearly 40 years, once banned a satirical play in 2017 titled The State of the Nation, calling it “insulting.” William Ruto’s government now equates a high school drama festival piece, Echoes of War, with subversion and national threat, just as Idi Amin once banned newspapers for referring to him by his first name. Samia Suluhu, who came into power with promises of tolerance, now presides over a Tanzania where dozens of CHADEMA party members have been “disappeared,” and artists like rapper Roma Mkatoliki have been kidnapped and tortured for politically charged lyrics. This is the psychological profile of tyrants past: paranoid, insecure, and unfit to lead societies that breathe freedom. Saddam Hussein had his son-in-law killed for questioning military decisions and blamed it on his clan. Kim Jong-un allegedly executed his Defence Minister in 2015 for “disrespect” after he dozed off in a meeting. In East Africa, criticism need not even be spoken; to dissent in your heart, or in your script, or in your dreams is now enough to summon the wrath of power. Like Kim Jong-il, who once executed a general for merely drinking during mourning, our trio seems ready to jail someone simply for thinking the government is a joke. Their egos are so outsized, they mistake criticism for coups and satire for sedition. These are men and women who probably lose sleep not over poverty or hunger, but over memes. It’s almost poetic in its absurdity—leaders who have everything, terrified of teenagers with hashtags. History warns us of leaders who can’t stand mirrors: Nero set Rome ablaze to silence dissent, Hitler crushed cabaret artists and poets, and now, here in East Africa, a rally, a slogan, or a school play is enough to summon the full wrath of the state. How thin must your skin be to declare war on drama students? The difference between our present and the past is narrowing fast—and while they may not yet have built gulags, they're certainly laying the psychological foundations for them. These aren’t leaders; they are shadows wearing crowns, terrified of light. It is no accident that William Ruto panicked at a high school play, or that Samia Suluhu dispatched police to arrest Tundu Lissu for speaking in metaphors, or that Museveni considers any public performance that doesn’t praise him to be an existential threat. These East African leaders follow a long and pitiful tradition of despots who feared art more than armies. In 1937, Joseph Stalin ordered the execution of the Soviet theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold for promoting "anti-Soviet ideals" through avant-garde stagecraft. Stalin had already sent the great poet Osip Mandelstam to a gulag for writing a short poem that dared to describe his moustache as "the cockroach mustache." William Ruto, too, couldn't handle a drama piece titled Echoes of War — a high-school student play that critiqued police brutality — without sending riot police to Butere Girls and force them to walk out of performing the play. If Stalin was frightened by a poem, and Ruto by a schoolgirl’s play, then the conclusion is inevitable: both were never secure in the legitimacy of their rule, only in the volume of their suppression. Consider also the ghost of Augusto Pinochet, Chile's military dictator, who in the 1970s banned Victor Jara’s music for its leftist themes and had the singer’s hands crushed before executing him in a stadium filled with dissidents. Today, the Ruto administration persecutes kids not adults artists and playwrights, kids. Samia’s presidency arrest of rapper Roma Mkatoliki in 2017 by state operatives is a direct echo of Nigeria’s military dictatorship, which once arrested and beat the legendary Fela Kuti for songs exposing corruption. But perhaps the most pathetic link lies with Museveni, who banned political theatre in Uganda in 2009, fearing that even village plays were sowing rebellion. Like Hitler — who in 1933 burned thousands of books and banned Bertolt Brecht’s politically critical plays — Museveni too would prefer a nation of silent audiences clapping on command, never questioning. What unites these autocrats — past and present — is a shared phobia of the imagination. For what is art if not the most dangerous form of resistance? Hitler feared Thomas Mann and exiled him. Stalin exiled Boris Pasternak and suppressed Doctor Zhivago. Franco in Spain imprisoned playwrights and banned all Basque literature. Today, Ruto teargasses school going children and prevents them from performing a play, Museveni labels dissident poets "foreign agents," and Samia speaks of "maintaining order" while targeting musicians who ask too many questions. These are not leaders—they are frightened gatekeepers of thin-skinned regimes, unable to endure a stanza, a verse, or a scene that holds a mirror to their power. And like all insecure rulers before them, they will attempt to burn every script that does not worship them. But what they fail to learn from history is this: you can exile the poet, jail the singer, censor the script—but you cannot kill the idea. Tyrants fall. Art endures. It is time for citizens of East Africa to confront this grim reality. We are not just neighbours bound by treaties and roads; we are becoming a community of violation—a triad of regimes reading from the same dark script. If this script is not torn apart and rewritten by the people, then soon, silence will be our only common language. If I had time, I would have added footnotes.